Flood waters recede in France after damaging LourdesToulouse, France (AFP) June 21, 2013 -
Authorities said Friday that flood waters were receding in southwestern France after claiming three lives and damaging the Catholic pilgrimage site Lourdes.

"The flood's recession has been clearly confirmed," the prefect's office for the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region said in a statement.

Many roads remained closed however and some residents were still unable to return to their homes.

The floods this week sent water pouring into the religious sites at Lourdes, forcing thousands of tourists to be evacuated and suspending visits.

Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a local peasant girl in 1858, is visited by six million people every year, with the numbers in July and August peaking at up to 40,000 a day.

Officials said 37 hotels in the town were badly damaged by the floods and would not re-open for several months.

The grotto had been due to reopen on Friday but authorities said this was being pushed back to Saturday.

The underground Basilica of Saint Pius X, which can normally host up to 25,000 pilgrims, remained partly flooded, with its floor covered by mud.

Officials said more than 300 calls had come in offering donations to help with repairs.

Flooding last October caused an estimated 1.3 million euros in damages to Lourdes but the clean-up operation is expected to be significantly more expensive this time.

Three people were killed in the flooding, including a 54-year-old woman found drowned in her car and two elderly people swept away by the waters.

"I watched my tank of heating oil rise up out of its concrete casing and just float away, like a boat."

Paulette Peythieu has spent a large chunk of her 83 years in the tiny village of Fos on France's mountainous southwestern border with Spain.

But she had never seen anything quite like the floods that, this week, left the hamlet devastated and cut off from the rest of the world.

"You know, I've been wiped out," the 83-year-old confessed on Friday after rescue services and Red Cross volunteers reached the village, three days after the Garonne river was transformed into a raging torrent, wreaking havoc across the Haute Garonne department.

Peythieu, who was born in the village of around 250 habitants, watched the devastation unfold from the first floor of her little house. "You cannot imagine how heartbreaking it was to see that," she said.

The pensioner's entire garden was covered by around 40cm (16 inches) of mud that was compacting hard as the water drained out of it.

On top lay two huge tree trunks, ripped from their roots in a telling indication of the raw power of the torrents that claimed three lives in the region this week.

One of the two bridges in the village was washed away after a loose tree trunk smashed into its central pillar. Weakened, the structure could not resist the tonnes of water sweeping down from mountain tops where unseasonally large deposits of snow had been quickly melted by a sudden spike in temperatures.

In the village's main street, Sebastien Gillet, 30, recounted how he had been forced to rescue his grandmother from her cottage, which was badly damaged by a gas explosion triggered by a leak that was caused by the speed at which the cellar was flooded.

"When the electricity came back on, that must have provided a spark and everything went boom," he said. "The floor on the ground level is wrecked and the windows have all been blown out."

Inspecting the large number of dead tree trunks and branches strewn across the village, a number of residents blamed the build-up of wood debris further upstream for exacerbating the damage.

"You are not allowed to touch anything in the Garonne but you have to be able to cut down dead trees and clear them out. I saw waves pass in front of me after the blockages caused by bits of trees gave way," Michel Berra, a retired teacher who was, like almost everyone else in the village, shovelling mud.

Rescue workers used motorised pumps to clear water from the worst affected properties and Red Cross teams were helping residents with cleaning up.

In the village post office, other volunteers distributed free food supplies provided by a supermarket located just across the nearby border with Spain.

And the local mayor was taking orders for prescription medicines to be collected and delivered by firefighters pending the reopening of the road into the village.

Lourdes closed, 200 evacuated after flash floodsToulouse, France (AFP) June 18, 2013 French authorities Tuesday shut the grotto at Lourdes and evacuated about 200 people following flash floods at the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site.
The preventive measure came a day after heavy rain and unseasonal snowfall in the area led to rivers flowing well above their normal levels, even cutting off some roads.
"The Sanctuaries are closed," the local prefecture of the Haute-Garonne a ... read more

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency.
All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement